Let's Make a Deal.
One way to get your software out to a wider audience is to bundle
it with other packages. This week we saw a number of deals of this
sort. For example, Loki Software
announced that they are now shipping
PowerPlant, a suite of developer tools and software for Linux from
theKompany.com. Loki mostly sells computer games, ported to Linux.
theKompany.com has tools that help game developers. It's a win-win
situation for both companies and their customers.

Along the same lines, Corel has
announced a deal which will get Corel Linux and Word Perfect
Office 2000 bundled with systems sold by Andara Technologies.

Sun Microsystems is doing it too. They
announced a long list of companies that have agreed to
redistribute StarOffice 5.2. The list includes Caldera, Red
Hat, TurboLinux, SuSE, MandrakeSoft, Conectiva, Definite Software,
Stormix, MacMillan, and Easy Information Technology.

Lineo's product is its Embedix embeddable distribution and they are
working with Hitachi Semiconductor
to bring Embedix to Hitachi's SuperH processor.

This deal between VistaSource (part of Applix) and Comdisco
offers Linux desktop systems, based on refurbished computers, with
the intent of making a very low-cost system aimed at schools,
non-profit organizations, and other budget-constrained customers.

Services can be shared too, as we see in
this announcement from NCR, saying that it will be offering
support services for Red Hat's distribution.

Also service-oriented is this
press release announcing plans from Cendio Systems and Cell
Network to offer new companies developing free software "a
complete range of services to help them get their businesses
up-and-running more quickly". Cendio will be offering a
development platform while Cell Network offers business development
services.

New Products.
Terra Soft Solutions has announced a demo of an
8-node, Apple G4 cluster running Terra Soft's Black Lab Linux at MacWorld.

MSC Software has
released MSC.Nastran DMP for Linux. Dubbed ''Supercomputing
Without a Supercomputer'', MSC.Nastran is a package that has been
used in the aerospace and automotive industries to distributing
large simulation tasks amongst many PC computers.

SolSoft has
announced the release of its "Solsoft NSM" proxy firewall code
as open source. A quick look at the associated web site
shows that the GPL has been used to license the code.

Popular Power, developers of commercial distributed computing
software software package released in April, announced the
availability of a Linux client for their software. "Once downloaded from
www.popularpower.com, the Popular Power software operates in the
background of Linux machines. When a PC is idle or has spare
processing power, the program gets a small piece of a large
computing task from the Popular Power server and returns results
when complete. Popular Power's general-purpose commercial software
differs from that of earlier, non-commercial efforts in its ability
to execute different types of jobs, as opposed to single
functions."

An open source release of the client is promised for early next
year. The software is envisioned for use in donating time for
research projects or even potentially selling unused time to
commercial companies at some point in the future.

IBM has
announced the availability of "WebSphere Homepage Builder" for
Linux.

Napster Press Release.
Napster has posted
a press release with information from the legal brief they have
filed. "First, the RIAA contends that Napster users are
infringing. However, under the decision that protected the
manufacturing of MP3 players, referred to as "the Diamond decision,"
and under the Federal statute called the "Audio Home Recording Act,"
(AHRA) consumers have an absolute right to create and transfer
digital music for noncommercial purposes. And since its users are
not directly infringing, Napster cannot be liable for contributory
infringement."

Sourceforge growth rate 23 percent per month.
VA Linux released this
press release indicating that new free software
projects have been added to the Sourceforge repository at a growth
rate of 23 percent per month. Recent high-recognition additions to
Sourceforge include MySQL and XFree86.

Press Releases:

Open Source Products.
Unless specified, license is unverified.

Last week in this
space we
reported on SF Interactive, Inc. and its release of TagTemplate
website building software to the worldwide open source community.
We have since discovered that the module was released under the "GNU
Lesser General Public License" The GNU LGPL.

The Salutation Consortium (HIGHLAND, Utah), which provides open
information exchange standard called service discovery for
multi-platform handheld computers, will offer its reference model
Salutation Lite code through an "open source arrangement".

Commercial Products for Linux.

BigStorage Inc. (San Francisco)
announced the unveiling of the tRAID, the first
industrial-strength RAID for Linux.

Inprise/Borland (SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.) announced full support of
native database driven Apache Server applications in its forthcoming
Linux developer tool set code named "Kylix."

Linux NetworX, Inc. (SANDY, UTAH)
announced the release of ClusterWorX version 1.2, its cluster
management software.

Macmillan USA (INDIANAPOLIS) announced that Linux-Mandrake 7.1
Deluxe is now available in retail stores. The Deluxe edition
includes 7 CDs of applications, utilities and tools.

Macro 4 (PARSIPPANY, N.J.) launched UniQPrint for Linux,
adding output management for printing, faxing and web site postings to
the list of traditional enterprise applications available on Linux.

Mele Systems, LLC (GREAT RIVER, NY) announced it will unveil
Youseful-Linux, the Linux version of Youseful in both a Delphi
and stand-alone version.

Proven
Accounting, Inc. announced that Proven CHOICE, its
multi-user accounting system for Linux, will now be available only
through qualified Linux installers and dealers.

MAPICS, Inc. (ATLANTA) announced the global expansion of its
Point.Man extended enterprise application (EEA), now available
in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Net Talk (LOS ANGELES) announced its voice over IP
technology is now available for Red Hat Linux.

Opera Software (OSLO, Norway) released the full version of
Opera 3.62 for EPOC.

Rave Computer Association (Sterling
Heights, Michigan) announced that they will integrate SPARC based
platforms for customers building a Linux operating environment.

SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.) (BOSTON) announced that it
has entered the embedded mass data storage market with the
introduction of a flash memory-based ATA-Disk Chip (ADC) product
family.

Tech Soft America (TSA) (ALAMEDA, Calif.) announced the
availability of the HOOPS Internet Tools for the creation of
web-based visualization applications or publishing models to the
web. The HOOPS Internet Tools consist of the HOOPS/Stream and
HOOPS/ActiveX Toolkits.

Tech Soft America (TSA) (ALAMEDA, Calif.) announced the immediate
availability of the HOOPS 3D Application Framework (HOOPS/3dAF)
version 5.0, with enhancements and extensions, including the HOOPS
Internet Tools module.
d

O'Reilly & Associates (Sebastopol,
CA) announced "Linux Network Administrator's Guide", by Olaf
Kirch. Originally part of the Linux Documentation Project, this book
will "enable users to master all those day-to-day, practical issues
that arise in Linux networking."

O'Reilly (SEBASTOPOL, Calif.) announced a new edition of
"Building Internet Firewalls".

InterVideo Inc. (SANTA CLARA, Calif.) is getting help from
intellectual capital exchange HelloBrain.com. Using that
capital, InterVideo will be releasing a Linux version of its product
in late summer 2000.

Progeny Linux Systems, the startup created by Ian Murdock and
Bruce Perens, has announced the completion of
its first round of financing. Progeny's focus seems to be on the
network management side - their products will be aimed at management
of networks of workstations as single systems.

Linux At Work.

Linux NetworX has
announced that Lockheed Martin is using a 128-processor Linux
cluster for aircraft analysis tasks.

VA Linux Systems, Inc. (SUNNYVALE, Calif.) announced that
Incanta, Inc. is rolling out hundreds of VA Linux servers
across its broadband-edge network infrastructure.

Other.

M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers Ltd. (BOSTON) announced that leading
Linux operating system developers are providing support for
DiskOnChip in existing and upcoming Linux distributions.

Vovida Networks, Inc. (SAN JOSE, Calif.) is sponsoring a position
on the International Softswitch Consortium (ISC) for someone in
the Linux development community.